Dr. Allen Hunt - The Mass and the Megachurch - 2016 Defending the Faith

I'm very very grateful to have grown up as a Methodist my grandfather was a Methodist pastor my great-grandfather was a Methodist pastor my great-great-grandfather was a Methodist pastor my great-great-great grandfather was a yes he was funny you should know that and so I grew up obviously in a thoroughly Methodist environment my parents worked at Methodist colleges and so it just never occurred to me that there was anything beside Methodists and so I'm very grateful to the Methodist Church and what I share today as I guess about 30 to 40 percent of Methodists would consider themselves or what I used to be evangelicals Methodists were the original evangelicals under John Wesley but that's a whole nother conversation and so I'm very grateful to that background and so what I say today I share out of love and appreciation for my background and also love and appreciation for where I am because I just need to say bye begin by saying it is really really really wonderful to be Catholic it really is amen and I'm really glad to be home and so to set the table for just a minute just count the CliffsNotes since I didn't share my own journey beforehand I was a pastor for 20 years as you know I for many of those years was the pastor at Mount Pisgah which is a mega church in Atlanta is the largest Methodist Church in terms of attendance and people served we had about 5,000 people on Sunday we had we served about 15,000 people in our different ministries in an average week and so we're the largest Church east of the Mississippi one of the largest ones Methodist churches in the world and it was an extraordinary privilege to be there I came into the church in January Feast of the Epiphany January of o8 on the 44th birthday and when I came in you're doing the math yeah that means I'm 36 now and that's amazing you come into the Catholic Church and you get younger automatically Ponce de Leon and so I came into the church and I now partner with a guy many of you know my good friend Matthew Kelly he and I lead dynamic Catholic which is headquartered and since Anne Maddi even though I live in Atlanta we have about 80 people in Cincinnati that we work together with to help re-energize the church with a particular focus on engaging disengaged Catholics to help reenergize lives and parishes so as part of that you've gotten your book in your bag you got a copy of one of my books as a gift from Matthew and me to you I hope that that's helpful to you if you've read it before share it with a friend because that's what they're for so when I came into the church in Atlanta my house was not far from st. Brigid parish where a good friend of mine eddie and karen hughes go i saw her sister here a minute ago and so I met the pastor there men's senior Paul Reynolds who was about 70 years old he was an Irishman I'll share more about him tomorrow and a wonderfully holy and loving priest an extraordinary man one of the holiest people I've ever met and he passed away a couple of years ago when his leukemia came back and I miss him every day and when I came into the church he was unbelievably gracious to me because the Catholic Church doesn't exactly have advertisements on Catholic jobs.com for former megachurch pastors to to come in and we'll put you to work in some meaningful way and so I came in not knowing having any idea what I was going to do to use my gifts or to make a living for that matter and so when senior Reynolds invited me to lunch one day and he said Alan you know your mega church is about 300 yards former mega church is about three hundred yards down the road from Saint Brigid and I'd like to pick your brain a little bit about a conversation that I have more often than I would like to have so we sat down for lunch and when senior Reynolds said Alan I have to tell you you know I don't understand this conversation and I'm hoping that you can help me understand it and he said basically it goes like this he said it happened to me actually day before yesterday a 40 45 year-old man came into my office and he said min senior Reynolds just wanted to come by and tell you that I love you but we're leaving to go to another mega church here in Atlanta because we're trying to have a deeper personal relationship with Jesus I mean senior Reynolds said I have this conversation and unfortunately I have this conversation a lot and I have to ask you I don't understand what he means that we're looking for a deeper personal relationship with Christ because to me it just seems obvious that in the presence of the body and blood the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist it's the most intimate relationship we could possibly ever have so can you help me understand what people aren't finding here and they are finding in mega churches so that I can understand that a little better and perhaps be a little better priest in a little better pastor and so he and I began a friendship then it had a number of conversations and I'm going to try to distill them into 45 or 50 minutes and then we'll have some Q&A at the end to dialogue on this so to start with as I shared with you last night I want to share three things that evangelicals in particularly mega churches and it's important to say on the front end two things about mega churches one is we define a mega church as a church that has an average worship attendance on a weekend of 2,000 people or more lots of people throw that language around in different kinds of ways but that's technically what the definition is if the church averages 2,000 people or more on Sunday that by definition is a mega church secondly it's important to understand that oftentimes the culture and sometimes we as Catholics paint with a broad brush when we talk about mega churches and I have to tell you from personal experience there's a wide array and diversity of types and charisms if you will within mega churches and they're not all the same and so we're going to look today in the latter part of my talk in the workshop and discussion we're going to look at three different mega churches and one thing that each of those can teach us but before that I want to share with you the three things I believe that mega churches would benefit from learning from us and they're a big part of why I came home into the church so my mom grew up down river here in Ohio if you got on a boat here in Steubenville and you went a couple of hours and you got off and literally got onto the banks of the Ohio that's where my mom grew up in a house on the banks of the Hana and her mom was the telephone operator in this little town town of maybe a thousand people poorest County in Ohio and they were poor they live right on the water and so much so that we have the furniture from my mom's childhood that still has the the water marks from when the Ohio River flooded so she grew up on the river I actually in the river and so my grandmother was was a little spitfire of a lady she was probably five feet tall and I don't know that she ever weighed 100 pounds in her life and she was the telephone operator back when the telephone operator was the center of the universe in a town so she knew everything that Myrtle was telling Gladys and everything that tom was telling Bob and so when when the Ohio River flooded she loved her job so much she had a little rowboat that she would get in and she would float down to downtown where they had a ladder on it outside of the phone company and she would take climb that ladder into the second floor so that she could keep the phone's operating unbelievable lady so when she died back in 1991 my mom isn't or was an only child and she has two sons my brother and I I got the looks and the brains and my brother well he's my brother and so so we go up to this little town in Ohio for my mom to kind of begin to close up things and sell my grandmother's house and and to have her funeral and my mom is taking care of everything inside the house because my grandmother was a pack rat and my mom tells my brother and me to go to the tool shed out back because my grandmother until she was 87 still cut her own grass and go back to the tool shed and clean out all the stuff that she's got back there so my brother and I would go back to the tool shed and we go in and on the floor of the tool shed it is a trunk like a footlocker it's got one of those curved tops with sort of the gold bands across the top almost like a pirate treasure chest and my brother and I look at that and I said you remember James do you ever remember seeing this thing and he says no and I said me neither and I said I wonder what's in this thing and so I go to open it up and it's locked and so immediately I began to think you know here's my grandmother who lived on nickels and dimes and she lived on her Social Security check that was all that she had maybe all those years she had been sandbagging us and she had this special treasure back in behind her house just in case and she was going to hand this on as an inheritance to my brother and me and so I go and I find a crowbar and I say hey let's open this thing up and so my brother and I are getting excited we're beginning to think about how we're gonna spend all that Spanish galleon and all those gold and jewels that are inside of that treasure chest and so I popped that thing open and the lid goes open and the thing is completely full all the way to the to the to the top with old pictures old black-and-white pictures and many of you are old enough to remember the kind of even had the lace around the outside of them and and there's all these pictures and black and white of all these people and I don't know who they are I don't recognize any of these people and I mean there's literally thousands of pictures in this footlocker and so I'm thinking hey these are all the people I don't know much about my mom's side of the family in the Ohio River Valley and I'm going to learn all about them today and so my brother and I are excited and so I picked up on these pictures and there's a man and a woman standing next to a mule and a plow and then there's another one with a with it with an old man standing in front of middle country store and then there's another with a family to get with their little kids and I pick it up as I can't wait to find out about my mom's family not turn it over to see who these people are in the back was blank and I start to go through all those pictures and not a single one of them had any names or identification written on any of them so what I had discovered was this treasure chest of all these people and I had no idea who they were I knew that they must be important in some way my grandmother wouldn't kept him and they were probably related to her in some way but she hadn't left us any way of knowing that and so it was like being an orphan I knew I had all these relatives I just didn't know who they were and what they had to teach me all my years as a Methodist I grew up as a kid I learned the Apostles Creed we didn't really use the Nicene Creed very often but we use the Apostles Creed every week my entire life I learned that saying it next to my father is a little kid and we would always say the communion of saints and I would say to might say to my parents and I would ask this in class as to what does that mean they go well you know there's we have communion with the Saints and I said well what does it mean to have communion of the Saints I said well you know I got communion and you got Saints that's what it is and I always kind of wondered what that was in my in my mind the communion of saints was kind of like that treasure chest it was like there were all these people who had lived before me who had been Christians before me and some of them had even died but we didn't know anything about them we didn't know anything about our ancestors we sort of knew who they were we kept him in a chest locked up in the tool shed and we knew they were there we just didn't know who they were what they had to teach us and so as I began to make my way into the church you can imagine my surprise and really my encouragement that came when I met a guy named st. John Fisher he's really helped my journey you remember the story I won't give you the whole story but you remember King Henry King Henry had had it had a little issue right I had a little issue and he wanted to get rid of Catherine of Aragon and he wanted to bring in a new wife and ultimately wanted to bring in multiple wives and this was before that was cool and this is before I got you on Entertainment Tonight right and so so he wanted it he had this issue this adultery issue this lust issue call it whatever you want and so he told the church I'm going to divorce Catherine and I'm going to Mary Ann and the church said you know what Henry we want to invite you to a deeper yes we want to invite you to a deeper yes to marriage we want to invite you to a deeper yes to fidelity we want to invite you to a deeper yes to understanding your life and the grace of God and Henry said I reject your deeper yes and I give you a firm no and Henry became the first Protestant in the lineage that I come out of with the Church of England and the Methodists in the Assemblies of God in the Pentecostal movement all of which came out of King Henry's saying no to the yes of the church King Henry said I'll go create my own truth and I'll create my own church and in fact I'll be the head of the church and so we won't have this problem anymore it's going to be a lot of agreement with me in my church and so Henry became the first man to say no I'll create my own and one of the things that the mega churches could learn from us is this notion of truth the notion that the church exists so that I can conform to the church rather than the church can conform to me amen I am not the center of the universe in spite of the fact that I think that I think that I am I am not the person who knows everything the church possesses the truth about marriage about the real presence of Jesus about the teaching and the dogma that we have that we have refined and elucidated for 2,000 something years and I hope to conform to that church and I hope to conform to that truth and so the notion of truth is a slippery thing when you go to a mega church and frankly to any Protestant Church but that's a whole other conversation when you study mega churches what you'll discover is that most of them not all of them but most of them probably 75 or 80 percent of them are still have their original pastor the founding pastor because typically what happens is you have a pastor who's a particularly gifted or effective leader usually a man occasionally a woman who's a particularly gifted preacher and leader and the strength and the tour de force of his or her personality creates this movement in this growth over time and it usually grows up around him or her and so what happens is that person becomes the arbiter and the determiner of what is true you with me and so rather than the church possessing the truth it goes back to King Henry where one man determines the truth and what you also find is because of that because of the strength of that pastors personality and because he has been typically the arbiter and determiner of what's true succession planning in mega churches very rarely works what usually happens is the mega church grows the pastor stays it leads that church 20 30 40 years he or she retires or passes away the mega church struggles to figure out how to pass the baton on and then it slowly declines and either sinks to it to a much lower level and sustains or it goes away altogether like the Crystal Cathedral with Robert Schuller but other young pastors are coming up so new mega churches are being born as other ones are aging out you with me because it revolves around one man rather than the body of truth you still with me so the first thing that I would hope that mega churches could learn from you and me and I think that's part of why we're at defending the faith sharing the faith defending the truth sharing the truth and why we spent the whole morning talking about what is truth and why dr. Shri last night helped us understand what is truth is because you and I understand that if you don't have truth to pass on you don't really have much to pass on do you all you have is a personality and a really really good time I don't mean that in diminishing way I mean it's helpful to a lot of people but if you want to sustain something and you want to actually share the faith across generations across places and across time you have to embrace truth which leads to number two the second thing that mega churches could learn from us is that truth because the Catholic Church possesses the truth is the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church the fullness of truth Pope Benedict reminded us that salvation is still available in Protestant communities but the fullness of truth belongs in the Catholic Church for multiple reasons including the apostolic succession and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and because of that that leads to holiness holiness if you go ask the average American think of one person name one person who is holy you know who the number one answer is and it's almost eight to nine out of ten people the first answer they'll give you mother Teresa almost without exception eighty to ninety percent of the people will say ah man I don't know mother Teresa think about that here's a little woman who spent her time not that there's anything wrong with being little she had a little more hair than she probably needed but still that's being little and hairy is good and so she here she has given herself over to serving the poor and the dying and the rejected and over the course of her life by the time she passed away three thousand other women had come to join what she was doing in hundreds of hospitals hospices and settings across the globe and she never recruited a single one why because holiness is attractive isn't it holiness is like a magnet holiness that resides in the church because of the truth holiness attracts people when we live it think about st. Francis of Assisi you take a little guy you stick him into the middle of Italy you give him virtually nothing to eat or drink and say hey just go around and preach the gospel and love people and guess what happens this entire movement swells up around him because holiness is attractive as I think back and I'll share more of this in much more detail tomorrow in my talk as I think back in my journey hear me this is this is kind of an odd thing to say the holiest people I've ever met without exception we're all Catholic the holiest people I ever met we're all Catholic before he collapsed I ran eclis the least holy people I've ever met we're all Catholic I don't know why that is I'll leave that I'll leave that to another speaker along the way but the holiest people I ever met were all Catholic - tomorrow I'll describe one of them in my journey let me just share another one of them with you now when I was in graduate school which is sort of when my journey began to take root I became close friends with a Dominican friar who's still my best friend today and we were in grad school and he was really smart and I'm not and he was really well-prepared and I wasn't and so I would go by the the Priory where he lived every day to get some help with our New Testament Greek because I'm from Georgia and we don't speak Greek in Georgia and so or they quit right before I got there and so I'd go by Nazi fathers Steve and I'd go in the back door to the kitchen and Mary would be the the cook and she was preparing the meal for the fryers there's 10 or 12 of them there and every day when I was sitting in that kitchen an older retired priest who when I met him was 89 years old father CAD Chien he was a little wisp of a guy who's probably about five five at this point and he probably weighed about 110 pounds soaking wet and he had sort of wiry hair and it sort of blew in the wind so he could pick up AM and FM I stopped off the top of his head and so the first time I'm down there and you know Here I am this Protestant kid sitting in this Dominican Priory at the kitchen table because I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else they had been like we got quality standards you gotta stay in the kitchen and so so I'm there at the table and father Katz comes in he goes how are you now he's this old New England curmudgeon right and he said who are you and I said well I'm Alan I'm friends with father Steve because I good to say he said what do you did I said well I'm trying to work on this PhD in New Testament in ancient Christian history he goes huh you're from Georgia you work on a PhD never heard that before you know you you you can read I said yeah he said you married I said yeah got the ring he says you got kids I said yeah cuz I'll pray for you and so every time I would come by the Priory which was about every day Father calves would come through be getting a cup of coffee or he'd be getting a sandwich or whatever and he'd come down and he coming hey al good to see ya how you do I'm doing right father catch I'm praying for you and when he said I'm I'm praying for you he actually meant he was praying for me I mean that was that was his it wasn't like in the South when we say y'all come see us we don't really mean that I mean works being nice right we do not mean that hear me it's just being nice and so when he said I'm praying for you a lot of people say I'll pray for you and they're just being nice they don't mean it before the catch minute because his ministry was a ministry of Prayer and what I began to discover about Father cash because I got real sick and while we were there we had a tough time for those years I lost my whole colon I wear a bag chunk taken out my back where I got melanoma my wife suffered two miscarriages we had two little kids it was a hard several years and so every day father cash would come by and say how you doing in his own gruff New England curmudgeonly way but I knew that he actually genuinely cared and he was praying for me because it was a little prayer chapel upstairs where father Steve said father cash would spend most of his days praying and a life of prayer he's a retired priest and so he's living in the Priory and the woman who answered the phones for the Priory knew that if somebody called with an emergency at 3 o'clock in the morning about a car wreck about a surgery about a heart attack and they wanted a priest she knew not to call any of the active priests she knew the priest who actually not only would go but wanted to go was father catch he didn't care when the call came he wanted to go he was called to be a priest no matter what he's 89 he's gonna do the best he could and so he would go do that he had his ministry of Prayer this ministry of service now you got dominican friends you know I mean they don't get paid much if they get paid anything at all I don't know how much father catches retirement Stockman was but I'm guessing was like 20 bucks a father catch got his retirement check every month and he would sign the back and he would stick it in the poor box in the back of the church every single penny every single month when I asked him why he would do that he said well I got everything I need I mean he was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing since 1940 but for him they were he didn't need a haircut they fed him so what else do I need there's people that don't have sweet so he gave it all this life of prayer this life of service this life of generosity so one day I'm in that kitchen father catch comes down and he's got a big bandage on his forehead and he comes in he goes hey Alan how you doing I said I'm doing on because I'm praying for you and I said I appreciate that father catch I said you okay yeah I'm okay why act I said we got like this big thing on your head what's up kind of bows up puffs up yeah go to hospital last night I was in the prayer chapel I was praying for you and I fell asleep and I fell over and I hit my head on the rail in front of me and it busted open my head and so I had to go the hospital had to stitch me up and so he had on this red badge of prayer courage on it on his head and I thought to myself you know what he's the first person I've ever known who was wounded in prayer I mean how holy do you have to be to be wounded in prayer I'm telling you the holiest people that I have met without exception we're all Catholic so we have truth and because of that truth there's a holiness and then the third thing quickly that I would want megachurches to understand from us that I would hope that they could figure out is that that holiness leads to beauty next week I'll lead a pilgrimage to France pray for us truthfully and we'll go to a lot of places but you know almost no matter where you go if you go to Paris what's the most beautiful place no turn haha you go to Natchez Mississippi what's the most beautiful place st. Mary's Basilica if you've never been there yah to go you go to New York City what's the most beautiful place st. Vincent fare you ought to try that parish sometime you go to Rome try San Clemente almost anywhere you go the most beautiful place in that place is the Catholic Church why is that because you and I the church we understand that the building is not just a gathering place for like-minded people is it the building houses Jesus holiness which flows from the truth resides in the church and so this isn't just a place for us to gather because we all think the same way or we like the same pastor this is a place that we're building for the beauty and the glory of God and that God has revealed to us through the beauty but that the beauty is also an outflowing of the holiness that he puts into us so my hope would be that mega churches could understand from us truth holiness and beauty amen however we're also going to talk about the flip side because you and I are about evangelization as pope john paul ii has called us as Pope Benedict has called us as Pope Francis has called us you and I have the luxury been able to spend three days together at Franciscan University thinking about how we share the mercy of God in a way that impacts people's lives not just to be right amen but to love people that's why we're here is to love people and to speak the truth in love and so I think there's some things that you and I can learn from mega churches and we're going to look at three different ones and then we'll have a conversation about that together there's three things I think that we can learn there's actually more but I think there's three that are particularly helpful to us as we think about evangelization and sharing the good news and sharing the faith the first one of those is simplicity simplicity and you might put in parentheses next to that clarity simplicity and clarity I don't I'm not talking about being a simpleton I'm talking about simplicity when you're going through the desert and you are by yourself and you run out of water and you don't know where the next weigh station or the next oasis or the next canteen is going to be and you're getting increasingly thirsty you are desperately hoping yearning and looking for just a little Dixie cup of water aren't you god I would give anything Lord for just a Dixie cup of water you're not looking for somebody to come teach you about the theory of water I don't have any water but let me tell you why water is really important to you let me let me show you some pictures of water and let's look at that together let me describe for you what it was like when I had some water before I came out to you here in the desert and how wonderful it was and how great it's going to be when you find that water let me tell you what they thought about water in the Roman Empire because I think you're going to find that fascinating on your journey trying to find that Little Dixie cup of water let me show you some beautiful paintings of water because those will sustain you in your desert journey trying to find water know what you're looking for is a Dixie cup of water it's really pretty simple when you're thirsty what are you looking for water it's pretty simple isn't it and yet sometimes as Catholics I'm afraid we complicate the heck out of things I mean we love complicated the more complex and complicated it is the more we like it best part of why I became Catholic as I realized at some point I've gone as far into the heart of Jesus and into the heart of God as I can go as a prosthodontist can give me and that includes the Eucharist and if that's going to happen I got to come home but that's not where I started before you can understand the complex you have to understand this simple don't you before you can do calculus you have to do addition and subtraction before you do algebra you have to understand multiplication and division and I'm afraid that as Catholics we love the heck out of algebra and calculus and you can't go to the moon without algebra and calculus hear me you can't build a car without I'll bring calculus can you build a house without algebra and calculus but you can't understand algebra and calculus until you understand addition and subtraction let me give an example true story somebody who's extremely close to me and extremely important to me after a number of years wanted to come home into the church wanted to for the first time take a step into Catholicism and so called the parish near where he lived and said I would like to I would like to take some steps toward becoming Catholic what I do and and the person on the phone said we need to go to our CI a because what's that and they said what's about 30 week course and it starts in September and you call it in October and so we need to we need you to wait for a year if you'd come back next August or September well sign you up and you can go through that 30 weeks so if you'll just stay in the desert for two more years we'll get you a drink of water it's essentially what we're telling now I love our CIA but is that the only way that we can think about how we welcome people is our CIA the only thing that we have what would happen if five six eight times a year depending on your parish in the location and the demographics of your parish what would happen if you had five six eight times a year just sort of a one-night open house for people who want to come ask questions and understand a little bit about the church what would happen if you had three or four times you're just a welcome group for three or four weeks where you can come and we'll introduce you to the basics of the faith and how about we date a little bit before we ask you to marry us I got a great wife she's beautiful on our very first date blind date I went up to her and I said here's a really nice ring would you marry me and bear all my children and be faithful me for the rest of our lives no I did not do that you're correct I did that to three other girls it didn't work out so I took a different strategy right but I got more use out of that ring yeah and so what happened I dated I courted her I would her we grew in love for each other as we got to know each other and over the course of two years we got married but in the church we say hey you know when you're when you come into the church you better be ready to get married we don't date we don't want to get to know you we really don't want you to get to know us be ready megachurches I just want to just want to help you as simple as I can megachurches almost without exception specialized and simplicity and quick and clarity let me give you one example and I know that I may bite off more than I care to in this but but we're all friends Joel Osteen okay there you go hmm all right so so Joel people criticize Joel a lie and Joel's not perfect you will notice however that Joel doesn't criticize us back Joel shows a lot more charity to those of us who criticize him than we show to him but Joel in spite of some of his shortcomings which we all know Joel has a ministry that reaches a huge segment of our population that no other church is reaching let me describe one of them for you she's a friend of mine she committed adultery when she was about 35 our marriage broke up she was rejected by everybody in her life she had blown up her life and for the next 20 years she paid for it she was lonely she was broken she was wounded and nobody gave a rip least of all the church she wouldn't go anywhere near the church she want anything to do with church people and one day just by happenstance she turns on the television and lo and behold there's Lakewood Church Houston Texas there's Joel Osteen and for her it was the first time she had heard maybe in her whole life let's call her Christine it was the first time Christine had heard you know what here's a couple of simple things Christine God knows you and God loves you and God wants what's best for you he has hopes and dreams for your life now you and I would quibble with Joel about saying that includes material blessings set that aside my point is that there is a simplicity there of offering a simple cup of water that's effective for a huge number of people that's not confined to Lakewood Church in Houston Texas but you'll find in different kinds of formats with different kinds of theologies across megachurches that's why people oftentimes go because it's simple you go there's 20 minutes of music there's 40 minutes of preaching and teaching and then you go home it's simple and hopefully you get some encouragement along the way simplicity and clarity number two that might be helpful to us as Catholics number two what's the number one way that the church in the New Testament the freight between the book of Acts and the book of Revelation what's the number one way that the church is described as a family as a family brothers sisters family of God a hundred times between the book of Acts and the book of Revelation the church is described as a family in fact the church in the first four centuries of Christian history the church was known for radical hospitality if you came in you were a brother and sister from Lebanon and I lived in Rome I took you in man and you did the same for me in the Roman Empire the streets and the highways were rough and Christians we counted on each other we showed radical hospitality we were known as people who would take in folks and welcome them and house them and love them radical hospitality how well are we doing as Catholics of hospitality how well is your parish doing with hospitality maybe you're doing great my experiences this is not a strength for us I went to a parish in the last year I won't name names I won't tell towns I go and my wife's with me I've been invited to speak I'm actually I'm the invited speaker we go into town it's night we pull up to that we pull up and there's no sign Anita do you think this is the parish I don't know there's no sign doesn't say it's st. Joe's or st. in it it looks like a church oh there's a school oh yeah it says st. Joe's school this must be Saint Joe sure okay pull into the park on it says no parking in this lot at any time translated that means welcome we're glad you're here we drive around it's dark there's no lights in the parking lot there's nobody in the parking lot saying hey maybe you should park over here we drive around we finally say you know what I don't want have my car towed while I'm the invited guest speaker so I think I'll park on the street we get out of the car we walk up - I'm not making this up we walk up to the front door the lights are off the doors locked and there's a notebook a piece of notebook paper on the door that says we're expecting a large crowd tonight so we'll be meeting in the parish hall where's the parish hall yeah I didn't know either you don't know where the church is you don't know the parish hall is I didn't know either so we start wandering around the campus in the dark with no lights with nobody out there and we see a few cars over there that must be the parish hall over there we get to the parish hall and so we're walking in we're 30 minutes early because I'm supposed to be speaking at this place and and we walk in and there's some Usher's and these Usher's are really nice guys they love each other they serve together as Escher's every week so they're all talking to each other and they're having a great time and needed I walk in and they keep talking they keep talking I'm looking to see if there's a bulletin or a program or something so I go up in our tap one of the ushers on the shoulder and I say hey guys sorry to interrupt the conversation but I'm the speaker and is there a program yeah they're over there you can pick a pick pick it up over there and then go back to talking I'm not making this up now if that's what we're doing with the invited speaker what happens if you just stumbled in off the street we made it really really hard for somebody to make their way into what we hoped would be a good evening don't even have signs now let's take North Point Community Church which is not far from where I lived for the last 17 years Andy Stanley is the pastor so North Point Community Church again they got plenty of gaps we can talk about that all day long I just want to point out one thing you go you're in you're in the middle of an industrial or commercial area you're going down the road and as you get to the interest in North Point Community Church there's not only a big sign that says North Point Community Church there's a people out there waving saying North Point and they're wearing North Point Community Church things you know pretty well where to go you go down the road and then lo and behold it's like six flags man they're like 85 parking lots now Goofy and Pluto and Mickey and and you come up and there's volunteers out there and they're directing you to keep the traffic flow going so that you go to the neatest nearest most convenient parking space you get out of the car and there's signs that say church or sanctuary as they would probably describe it you and I wouldn't describe it the same way but they say sanctuary is that way so you know where to go as you get close to the building there's people there that say welcome to Northland Community Church here's a simple program and it's not eight pages in six point font it's basically here's two or three things we want you to know on the back side here's some sermon notes and when you go in somebody else will greet you and point out where the bathroom is and if you'd like a cup of coffee it's over there in other words we're glad you're here welcome we want to make it as simple to go to church and we want you to feel welcome because as Christians we have a call and a virtue of hospitality and I think we as Catholics we have a wonderful thing to offer the world we've got truth we got holiness we have beauty and it I would hope that we would see it as a family reunion when somebody comes even if it's a cousin we have in every met in our lives they're coming to the family reunion they're hoping to find family they're hoping to find home they're hoping to find belonging they're hoping to find community they're hoping to find their place I would hope that we would find ways to welcome them that's number two number three number three is the most important one of all number three is the most important one of all helpfulness helpfulness a dynamic Catholic Matthew and I talk about this a lot when the average person goes to Mass you may have heard us talk about our research and we did three or four years worth of research and we found that 7% of Catholics give eighty percent of the money to the parish and seven percent of Catholics give 80 percent of the volunteer hours to a parish that's not an opinion that's data not data that I like but it's data those seven percent are at Mass every week there's another 10 percent of Catholics who are also at Mass every week 17 percent of Catholics in America go to Mass every single Sunday 7 of that 17 are actively engaged 10 are totally disengaged they're there for all kinds of reasons my grandma made me go to Mass when I was a kid so I still go my wife tells me I got to go so I go my kids need to go to Mass because that's what I did when I was a kid they need to go to Mass and be bored so I take my kids and we sit here and we're bored and we go home when they when one of those 10% goes into mass they're not thinking boy I hope I get a good explanation of the Christology in the Gospel of John today they're thinking about one of 10 things they're thinking about their marriage they're thinking about their kids they're thinking about their health they're thinking about their job and they're thinking about their addictions or they're thinking about their friends job their friends marriage their friends kids their friends addictions or their friends health that's what they're thinking about you with me so they're coming in with a set of expectations going I hope that I can find something today that God's going to speak to me that's going to this going to bring some strength and power to my life and one of the reasons that they're disengaged is that they're not able to connect their marriage their addiction their health or their kids or their job or their friends with what's happening in mass contrast that if you go to Saddleback Church rick warren most of you know Rick Rick has become a very very very good friend of Catholicism in Lake Forest Orange County California Saddleback Church a very different place here me an extremely different place from North Point Community Church which is extremely different from Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen so Rick Warren who has become a very very very good friend of Catholicism in particularly in Orange County in the state of California Rick leads Saddleback Church he's been there since roughly 1980 if my memories right when you go up to Saddleback Church you'll notice two things you go up and there's a big portico outside Saddleback Church and there's all these booths and kiosks set up and there's clear signage that says Alcoholics Anonymous that says Narcotics Anonymous it says kid's recreation that says marriage enrichment that says grief grief share that says rainbows for kids and so all the different possible needs and hopes that folks have as soon as they show up on the campus there are people there welcoming them wanting to share with them you need help with an addiction so did I here's how this church help me and here's a way that we can help you you're looking for a place for your kids to play soccer I used to be that way here's what we offer here's how you can be a part of that they're trying to be helpful why stay with me because they want to scratch where you itch they want to scratch where you itch why because when they scratch where you which they earn trust and they earn credibility so they can help you discover the grace and the love of God I'm meeting you where you are rather than where they hope you will be they earn the privilege of assuring you to where they hope you will be you with me because Rick Warren great line says most unchurched people are seeking relief more than truth we have truth and it's a wonderful thing that's why I'm here Church but I think it would help us to understand that the average megachurch and Saddleback in particular is brilliant at trying to figure out how can we meet people where they are and that will give us the platform to help them discover the Grace and the love and the mercy and the truth of God and then even more amazing think about this for your parish if you go to Saddleback and you have a you say you know what I like to take the next step forward in faith what do I do I don't know much about this Christianity thing or maybe I grew up Catholic and I don't understand this whole Saddleback thing what do I do in the bulletin very clearly it says here's our recommended next step you don't have to do it but here's the one thing that we suggest that you do not here's 43 things we hope you pick one and if you like this one that just it's a Bible study on the Gospel of John contact Joe Parker don't give an email don't give a phone number how many times do we do that everybody knows who Joe is well no actually I don't I'm first I'm here I've no idea who Joe is now like learn more so Saddleback says here's here's a recommended next step now there's a bunch of other stuff but here's the thing that we suggest that you do and when you go to that recommended next step guess what happens they say here's a plan that we have that we've worked out that helps people discover the grace of Jesus Christ here's the plan you don't have to do it but this is the recommended one that you have there's a clarity and a helpfulness there but they earn the right to share that with you so when we were in New Haven let's wrap this up and we'll go to Q&A so very quickly the three things that megachurches can learn from us truth holiness and beauty the three things that perhaps we would be strengthened by learning from megachurches simplicity clarity hospitality and helpfulness so when we were in New Haven father Steve became our friend I knew nothing about Catholicism and I'll share some more about that tomorrow you might argue that I still know nothing about Catholicism and you could make a pretty good case but I knew nothing about Catholicism and father Steve whom I was called Steve because he's such a dear friend our family now Steve became our deepest dearest friend is I was in the hospital having my colon removed as my wife was in the hospital for her miscarriages Steve just loved us Steve wasn't trying to make us Catholic Steve wasn't trying to get another notch in his belt as a Dominican I got two more Protestants today pum he just loved us he became our best friend and over the course of the years I mean maybe you might say that Steve was patient you might say that I'm just stupid you might be right on both fronts but over 15 years as I got as Steve and I and our friendship bloomed I began to discover all kinds of things about Catholicism that I never knew and I began to ask questions and I began to explore and eventually on January 6 2008 I came home into the church but it started back in 1991 when he and I became friends and he started loving us and through that love hear me through that love he earned the platform and that privilege I've been able to share with us the truth in the holiness and the beauty of the Catholic faith has changed my life from the inside out and I wouldn't trade anything for it he was helpful and as parishes when we're helpful to people remarkable things happen when we come at him with truth before we help him and show that we love him their defense cards go up like dr. sherry was saying last night but you want to help somebody discover the beauty of the faith first of all don't expect it to happen in a day and second of all do expect it to start with love amen

Channel: Steubenville Conferences

Views: 14,693

Rating: 4.9789472 out of 5

Keywords: Steubenville Conferences, Catholic, Franciscan University, Catholic Ministry, New Evangelization, Youth

Id: Jm5l0lb7Fko

Length: 47min 12sec (2832 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016